Berea College
Kentucky
1855
Blue and cream were being cited as the colors of Berea College by 1896, but it is not known when or how this combination of colors had been selected. Vintage Berea College tobacco cards, silks, pennants, and other memorabilia indicate that the college used various shades of azure blue. Berea’s secondary color began to be alternatively defined as either cream or white in the 1910s. In the 1930s Berea’s blue deepened to a Yale blue (dark blue) and cream was definitively replaced by white. Today the college uses a brighter shade of blue and describes its colors as “royal blue” and white.
Citations in the World Almanac (listed by cover date; color information is from the previous year): blue/cream (1897-1900); cream/blue (1902-1908); blue/white (1909-1910); white/blue (1913-1914); cream/blue (1915-1916); blue/white (1917-1918); cream/blue (1923-1931); Yale blue/white (1934-1935)
Academic hood lists published by the Intercollegiate Bureau of Academic Costume (IBAC) in 1927, 1948, and 1972 described Berea College as having a hood lined azure blue with a cream white chevron.
Reflecting the changes that had been made to Berea’s school colors by the 1930s, a list compiled by Kevin Sheard in Academic Heraldry in America (1962) described the college’s hood lining as Yale blue with a white chevron.
To avoid duplicating the hood lining the Bureau had already assigned to Pennsylvania State University no later than 1905, here the original IBAC lining assignment (with Berea’s traditional school colors) has been retained.